To Geek Squad or Not (Reply)

I just registered my brand new laptop this morning with the HP total Care package (which took a better part of an hour. Online registration should only take 5 minutes at most, but they didn’t have my serial number on file. The hour was jumping through various phone hoops trying to get to the right people and, of course, being on hold and all the telephone operators are HELLA chatty today. But I digress.) But registering my laptop reminded me that I recently had an experience with Geek Squad and repairing my television.

Right before we left for Los Angeles, our television, which is not even a year old, decided that the HD ports were no longer going to work. We had 4 of them on the LG tv. Three of them plain just didn’t work and one of them just wanted to show me images, but no sound. So I had to call Geek Squad to make an appointment.

Since the TV was X big, we couldn’t take it in. They needed to send a technician out, but only after they’ve ordered the part (which is basically the HD motherboard). We make an appointment for the day after we return from LA, but of course, we didn’t make it. When we returned, I had to reschedule, which wasn’t for another week.

Luckily, the TV had regular old component cable ports (they are the red,yellow,white,blue,green cables for HD), so I went out and spent $20 on component cables. We were able to watch TV, but it wasn’t as nice and sharp using those cables. And the AV cables don’t even compare when we played Xbox on it.

One week later, the TV repair guy came and he installed the new motherboard only to discover that there was a hell of a lot of static coming from that thing the moment you turned it on. He put the old motherboard back in and there wasn’t the static. So he left that in there since we could still watch TV with it using the component cables. The static was too loud.

So he returned yet another week later with new parts only to discover that there was the same problem of not HD inputs. Altogether, it was about three and half to four weeks and the tv was still broken.

But because of how their warranty agreement worked, we had the option of taking the tv back and getting a new one, which is what we opted for. We packaged back up that tv back into the original box (which we had kept in the garage) and lugged that big old thing back to Best Buy.

Unfortunately, they didn’t make my tv anymore. Or maybe fortunately, because we got that money back to buy another tv regardless of make or model. I had talked to my brother (who used to be part of the Geek Squad computer department) and he told me what to expect and he also told me which brands to buy. (He works for Sony so he was going to say Sony, but he also told me Samsung.) I did some research, but not a whole lot, but I knew which TV I could get that wouldn’t die on me. Needless to say, I did not buy an LG again.

I asked the sales person which brands got sent back the most and he said percentage-wise, it was all the same. But they sold more Samsungs, so more Samsungs came back. But he basically said that they all had the same return rate. But people had recommended Samsuns, including my brother and several other tech nerds, so that’s the one we got. The problem was that Samsungs didn’t come with the size of TV we had. So we had to upgrade to one that was 5″ bigger.

I paid the difference, which wasn’t a huge amount because it was on sale! and the warranty was carried over to the next tv. That’s only the case because the tv had broken within a year. Had it broken after the year, I would have needed to buy a new warranty. I was thrilled it decided to kick the bucket a month before the year was up!

I must say that it’s huge.

When all is said and done, I’m glad I paid for the extra coverage. And I had a decent experience with the Geek Squad.

I may change my mind after next week though. Our refridgerator is making a hell of a lot of noise and they’re coming out to replace the fan belt.